The 10 Best Visual Effects Scenes of 2011

There's a backlash building in Hollywood against the overuse of computer-generated imagery (CGI). For the most part, though, 2011's popcorn blockbusters still leaned heavily on green screens and render farms to produce the most spectacular visual effects (VFX) of the year. Here are our picks for the scenes that proved that pixels can still impress us (even when the movies they populate don't).

10. The Adjustment Bureau: Door-to-Door

10. The Adjustment Bureau: Door-to-Door

Say what you will about the decision to turn one of Philip K. Dick's bleakest, most nihilistic stories into a metaphysical romance, but The Adjustment Bureau is filled with VFX shots so classy, you never realize that whole streets, crowds and environments were fake. The most dizzying sequence comes at the end, when Matt Damon and Emily Blunt's characters sprint through various magical doors, seamlessly teleporting from one New York location to another. They travel from a courthouse to Yankee stadium to a Manhattan street, and then to Liberty Island. Without the VFX house’s before-and-after highlight reel, the reality-warping illusion is impossible to see through.

9. Immortals: Clashing with Titans

9. Immortals: Clashing with Titans

Gods move in mysterious ways in Immortals. Or, rather, their victims do, hanging and twisting in midair after being killed—a way the filmmakers demonstrated the superhuman speed of the gods making war with Titans.

This effect shows up multiple times during the movie, but the brawl that follows the Titans' prison break is most stunning, as the gods' targets and their spattered blood instantly downshift to a new, slower speed, drifting through space while combat proceeds at a regular pace around them. Though copious CGI completed the effect, the VFX wizards smoothly integrated the different movement rates by filming different actors at different speeds. One shot combined motion-capture footage filmed at 48 frames per second (fps), and separate footage at 500 fps.